Classics and National Cultures

Edited by Susan A. Stephens and Phiroze Vasunia

Description

Numerous nations have in one way or another engaged with the cultures of classical Greece and Rome. What impact does the classical past have on ideas of the nation, nationhood, nationality, and what effect does the national space have on classical culture? How has classical culture been imagined in various national traditions, what importance has it had within them, and for whom? This collection of essays by an international team of experts tackles the vexed relationship between Classics and national cultures, presenting essays on many regions, including China, India, Mexico, Japan, and South Africa, as well as Germany, Greece, and Italy. It poses new questions for the study of antiquity and for the history of nations and nationalisms.

Classics and National Cultures

Edited by Susan A. Stephens and Phiroze Vasunia

Table of Contents

Introduction1. 'out of eure sanscreed into oure eryan': Ireland, the Classics and Independence, Nicholas Allen2. Marooned Mandarins: Freud, Classical Education, and the Jews of Vienna, Richard H. Armstrong3. Classical Culture for a Classical Country: Scholarship and the Past in Vincenzo Cuoco's Plato in Italy, Giovanna Ceserani4. Classical Education and the Early American Democratic Style, Joy Connolly5. Mimicry and Classical Allusion in V. S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men, Emily Greenwood6. Editing the Nation: Classical Scholarship in Greece, c.1930, Constanze Guthenke7. Eastern European Nations, Western Culture and the Classical Tradition, Asen Kirin8. The Cosmic Race and a Heap of Broken Images: Mexico's Classical Past and the Modern Creole Imagination, Andrew Laird9. Unbuilding the Acropolis in Greek Literature, Vassilis Lambropoulos10. How to Build a National Epic: Digenes Akrites and the Song of Roland, Fernanda Moore11. Heraclitus on the Highveld: The Universalism (Ancient and Modern) of T. J. Haarhoff, Grant Parker12. Auerbach, Homer, and the Jews, James Porter13. Contestatory Classics in 1920s China, Haun Saussy14. The New Alexandrian Library, Susan Stephens15. Translatio and Difference: Western Classics in Modern Japan, Yasunari Takada16. Alexander Sikandar, Phiroze Vasunia